22 August 2023

Melissa Kirsch had a nice NYT piece last Saturday morning on “post-vacation clarity,” the fresh perspective one brings home from even a little time away from one’s accustomed place and routine.  But I owe the fresh perspective I woke with that morning to Tom Hanks, or at least to the Tom Hanks onto whom I’ve projected another persona, the one who inspired the giddy, “On the Street Where You Live,” I’m-in-love-and-miracle-of-miracles-he’s-in-love-with-me, “corny as Kansas in August” elation I felt for the only time in my life when in the fall of 1990 my then-colleague, later-husband, now four years gone, followed me home from the British Library to sit at the wobbly table in the kitchen of my rented Balcombe Street flat to declare he was helplessly and forever in love with me. 

So, what has Tom Hanks to do with this delight redux?  Well, I’d just finished reading Hank’s new novel, The Making of Another Major Motion Picture Masterpiece, which is a lot of fun.  And—like most people—I’ve always enjoyed Hanks’s performance in all the many films of his I’ve seen.  But more importantly, whenever I’ve seen or heard Hanks being Hanks—on Letterman’s show, giving a commencement address, or substituting for Peter Segal on the NPR game show Wait Wait Don’t Tell Me—I’ve not only registered his quick, well spoken, intelligent wit, but a mischievous glint in his hazel eyes that reminds me of my David, a look a mutual friend of ours once described as “good-naturedly diabolical.”

While not fully subscribing to the accuracy of horoscopes, when I first learned that my David’s birthday was 13 July, my only thought was “Oh, oh,” as the only serious boyfriend I’d had before—ever since known as the Bad Boyfriend—was born on 15 July.  So I wasn’t surprised when after Saturday morning’s crazy, absurd-but-exhilarating dream, I learned Hanks’s birthday is 9 July.  Another Cancer.  Check.

Most details of my just-barely asleep fantasy of unexpectedly, impossibly finding true love with Tom Hanks (!) faded soon after waking.  But still, till day’s end, the afterglow remained, that tsunami of joy, hope, and gratitude I thought I’d never feel again, the rush of dopamine or oxytocin or whatever hormonal endorphins flood the brain at those few very happiest moments of life.  I didn’t know I still had it in me.  But Hanks, playing for a limited engagement and a very private audience the role of my darling David, deliriously in love with me, let me know I did, recovering for one happy day that lightning in a bottle the brain, apparently, can retrieve.

The other night I watched Jerry Seinfeld and David Letterman interview each other on an episode of Letterman’s My Next Guest Needs No Introduction.  Letterman kept downplaying the worth of what he’d spent his life doing, but Seinfeld wouldn’t let him get away with it.  Giving people joy, even for a little while taking them happily out of usual concerns and worries, Seinfeld insisted, is the best gift one can bestow.  And I think he’s right.

So. Thanks, Mr. Hanks, for reminding me of the upside of being human, and the imperishable joy of loving and being loved in return.